Use of Cyclic-Delay Diversity (CDD) with Modified Channel Estimation for FER Improvement in OFDM Downlink

High reliability is required, even in Internet of things (IoT) communications, which are sometimes used for crucial control such as automatic driving devices. Hence, both the uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) communication quality must be improved in the physical layer. In this study, we focus on the communication quality of broadcast DL, which is configured using orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) as a multiplexing scheme and turbo code as forward error correction (FEC). To reduce the frame-error rate (FER) in the DL, we consider two transmitdiversity (TD) techniques that use space-time block code (STBC) or cyclicdelay diversity (CDD). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the TD performance and to enhance FER performance of CDD up to that of STBC. To achieve this goal, a channel estimation method is proposed to improve FER for CDD. For this purpose, we first evaluate the FER performance of STBC and CDD by performing computer simulations and conducting hardware tests using a fading emulator. Then, we conduct field experiments in the 2.5 GHz band. From the results of these evaluations, we confirm that STBC and CDD improved FER compared with single antenna transmission. CDD with the proposed channel estimation method achieved almost the same performance as STBC by accurately estimating the channel frequency response (CFR) and appropriately adjusting the amount of cyclic shift (ACS). When moving a received device around Yokosuka Research Park, STBC and CDD, using spatial diversity with omni antennas for TD, improved the FER from 3.84 x 10(-2) to 1.42 x 10(-2) and 1.19 x 10(-2), respectively.